The Alchemical Cabinet
The Sun over the City
The plate that gives the manuscript its name.
- Work
- from Splendor Solis
- Plate
- Splendor Solis
- Maker
- Attributed to Salomon Trismosin
- Date
- c. 1582
- Source
- British Library, Harley MS 3469 · scan: Wikimedia Commons
Wellcome Collection. Public Domain / CC BY 4.0
Format
The full-resolution scan, color-managed to the source plate — yours to print, study, and explore.
Size
$29.00
The story
A vast golden sun-face rises over a distant city, filling the sky with light — the plate that gives the whole manuscript its name, Splendor Solis, the 'splendour of the sun.' It is the closing image, the work's end shown as sunrise over a sleeping town, the red disc humanised into a broad radiant face. Painted about 1582 within a gilded border, it turns the abstract goal of alchemy into something a child could read: after the drowning and the darkening and the peacock's colours, day. Of all the manuscript's marvels this is the one people remember — the sun as the reward at the end of the work.
See it on your wall
The plate, in your home
The Sun over the City printed large and framed, hung in rooms like yours. Every edition ships ready to become the piece the room is built around.
About this reproduction
- A faithful reproduction of a public-domain plate — from Splendor Solis (1582), held by British Library, Harley MS 3469 · scan: Wikimedia Commons. The work was published before 1931 and is centuries out of copyright.
- Printed to order on 200gsm EMA matte art paper; framed pieces sit behind acrylic, no mat.
- Color-managed to the source scan; we correct nothing and invent nothing.
- Ships in 5–10 business days, rolled in a heavy-wall tube (framed pieces ship flat-packed).
- If it arrives less than perfect, we reprint or refund — your choice.
Why our plates cost more than a poster: we print from the highest-resolution scans available, at sizes where the engraving itself becomes visible — the emblem line, the letterpress bite, the registration of colour — on stock made to outlive its owner.
Attribution: Wellcome Collection. Public Domain / CC BY 4.0
